Грэм Мастертон - Famine

‘All right – maybe I’m exaggerating about the end of the world,’ said Karen. ‘But there’s one thing – and I probably shouldn’t be telling anybody this, but Peter Kaiser has already made his own personal arrangements to stock up with emergency food in case of a shortage, and Shearson Jones has enough eatables here to last him for a century. Worst of all, I listened in to a telephone conversation from Alan Hedges, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and I can’t be exactly sure of this, but it sounded like the president himself has ordered extra stocks of food to be shipped into Washington, in case the administration has to go short.’

Ed looked at Karen tight-lipped, and then back towards the house.

‘Isn’t that great?’ he said, hoarsely. ‘That’s how close and patriotic this nation becomes in a crisis. Oh sure – we all get to feel like buddies when the Russians invade Afghanistan, but what happens when we’re faced with a disaster at home? The politicians go on screwing the rest of us like they always do, and the powerful make plans to save their own hides while the average John and Jane Doe can go hang.’

Karen said, ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to tell the newspapers?’

Ed reached along the railing and laid his hand on top of hers. ‘I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to tell America myself. Just for today, I’m going to play along, like the poor young farmer who’s lost all his crops. But tomorrow evening. I’m going to be on live coast-to-coast television, and even if I only get ten seconds before they pull the plug on me. I’m going to use that broadcast to tell the real truth about what’s going on here, and tell it out loud.’ Karen looked at him. ‘I’m glad I talked to you,’ she said. ‘I was afraid you were one of Shearson’s people. I can trust you, can’t I?’

Ed smiled. ‘You and I, we don’t have any choice. If we don’t trust each other, just for this one day, then we won’t be able to trust anybody ever again.’

At that moment, Della stepped out on to the balcony, carrying a silver tray with an ice-bucket of Dom Perignon. She was dressed in a tiny gold satin bikini which scarcely covered her nipples, and which was drawn up revealingly tight between her legs.

‘Drinks, children?’ she smiled.

Karen glanced quickly and interrogatively at Ed to see if he thought that Della had been listening to their conversation, but Ed gave her a brief shake of the head. Della came up close, and stood between Ed and Karen, with her back to Karen and her breasts touching Ed’s shirt-front. Dramatically, she laid her hand on top of Ed’s and Karen’s hands, and said, ‘Isn’t this romantic? All for one, and one for all.’

All of his neighbours in that quiet and slightly shabby part of Washington recognised Professor Protter. He was small, and bald, and he walked in a busy, bustling way, like a wind-up clockwork toy. He always wore the flashiest of sports coats, too, with grey flannel pants that were baggy at the knees. They often wondered how a man who looked like that could have found himself such a pretty, exuberant wife, but then they didn’t know how tender and charming he could be to the ones he loved, and they didn’t know how much passion he showed her in the big brass-railed bed that dominated their pink-painted bedroom.

His wife was brunette, plump, but startlingly good-looking, particularly if you had a taste for Czech women. On Wednesdays and Fridays she gave piano lessons to the neighbourhood children, and on warm evenings, when the Protters’ windows were raised, you could sometimes hear her playing a Kempff piano concerto, with her husband accompanying her on his violin.

That Saturday afternoon, almost at the same moment that Della stepped almost naked on to the balcony of Lake Vista in Kansas, but an hour later because of the time zones. Professor Protter closed the door of the old Federal-style house behind him, and descended the five steps to the sidewalk, jingling his keys on the end of their chain. Overhead, the sky was grey and heavy, and there was a feeling of summer rain in the air. Three black children were playing football in the street.

As he walked away. Professor Protter turned for no reason at all and looked up towards the second-storey window. It was open, because of the heat, and his wife was leaning out, framed by the flowers in her window-box. She saw him, and gave him a little finger-wave, and blew a kiss.

A tall black man passing by in a crumpled linen suit said, ‘How you doing, Professor?’ and Professor Protter nodded and smiled.

He usually went out about this time on a Saturday to buy a bottle of Hungarian wine from Schwarz’s liquor store two blocks down. Then, he took the bottle home, and he and his wife would sit listening to long-playing records until it was time for an early supper. Saturday was usually goulash. Goulash and Liszt.

As he crossed the street at the end of his block, a dark-blue Cutlass abruptly started its engine, and moved out from the opposite kerb. Professor Protter didn’t give it a glance. He was thinking about Vorar D, and about Dr Benson; and he was hoping that Dr Benson would call him at home this evening.

The Cutlass U-turned, with a squeal of tyres, and nosed in beside him, keeping pace with him as he walked. It was only when he was passing the delicatessen, the one with all the fondants in the window, that he caught sight of its reflection in the glass, and turned towards it.

He saw the man’s face, in dark glasses, and he saw the shotgun. It didn’t even occur to him to take cover. He stopped in surprise, and the car stopped, and for a moment the killer and the professor faced each other in that humid afternoon a’I’mosphere, with the normal noisy life of the streets going on all around them.

‘Are you—’ Professor Protter started to say, and took a step forward. The man in the car, owing to a nervous reaction, fired. Professor Protter was hurled backwards into the delicatessen window, into the glass which smashed but hung magically suspended for a moment before slicing down on him, nearly one hundred pounds of razor-sharp plate, right into his open mouth, and severed his head from the upper jaw upwards.

The noise of the shot, whaabaammmm , and the terrible clanging of the broken glass, those didn’t seem to be audible until minutes and minutes afterwards, when the Cutlass had long since swerved away into the Saturday afternoon traffic, and the proprietor of the delicatessen had rushed forward, rushed , clutching his apron only to stop utterly still when he saw the top half of Professor Protfer’s head lying bloodily amongst his fondants, its red-smeared upper teeth looking as if they were biting into a tray of lemon creams.

‘God,’ was all he could say.

She reached up and tugged the cord that closed the bedroom drapes. The warm afternoon sunlight shone through the thin white cotton of her kaftan, and revealed her gentle curved silhouette. Lean, triangular back. Small rounded bottom. Long, lean legs.

Granger Hughes, on the far side of the room, beside the frondy potted palm, said, ‘We don’t have to do this, you know.’

‘Don’t you want to?’ she asked him. ‘Or is it against your religion?’

He smiled. ‘My religion is practical miracles,’ he said. ‘And if there was ever a practical miracle, it’s you.’

She walked across the polished wooden floor, and the kaftan flowed all around her. She approached him as quickly as a train, almost as if she wasn’t going to stop, and she had unbuttoned his shirt in a matter of seconds, four quick twists of her long-fingered hands. She pulled the shirt open, and bared his chest, with its huge silver-and-gold cross. He was very tanned, as if he had been stained in walnut-juice, the way boys disguised themselves in childhood adventure stories. His nipples were as dark as berries.